Scott Miller, a retired municipal finance official with four decades in the field, is being considered to serve as South Pasadena’s new finance director on an interim basis, the South Pasadenan News has learned.

Although an agreement has not been signed or finalized, “we are working on it,” said Luis Frausto, Acting Deputy City Manager.

Miller would become the tenth person to manage the city’s volatile finance department since the departure of David Batt in March of 2018.

CITY OF SOUTH PASADENA FINANCE DEPARTMENT PAST DIRECTORS

The news comes shortly after the city confirmed outgoing Finance Director John Downs, who  told the city last month he would retire May 2, has been persuaded to stay on “in a limited term capacity to assist with finalizing the fiscal year 2024-2025 budget,” Frausto said. Downs’ “role will transition from managing daily finance operations to focusing on specific projects, with the budget being his primary responsibility. We expect his contributions to extend at least through June.”

The city is currently scheduled to adopt the new budget June 5—a target that is looking increasingly less certain.

According to press reports, Miller was chief financial officer at the city of Beverly Hills for seven years through 2015, where he was credited with helping secure high ratings for the city from the three major credit rating agencies.

Miller then worked briefly as chief finance officer for Broward County, Florida and then with Urban Futures Inc., a local government service agency in California. In March 2016, he became interim chief financial officer for the city of Riverside, initially under a short term contract. Although he became a Riverside employee in early 2017, he left several months later. At the time, a Riverside city spokesman told a local publication he could not say if Miller’s departure from Riverside was a mutual decision.

Prior to joining Beverly Hills, Miller was employed by the city of Palm Desert, the city and county of San Francisco, the University of California–Berkeley and Turner Broadcasting System. He graduated from San Diego State University with a BA in psychology and minor in business administration and he holds a PhD in public administration from Arizona State University.

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